


I Live in the Light

by captivation



Category: American Horror Story: Murder House
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-25
Updated: 2012-02-23
Packaged: 2018-04-07 11:48:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 12
Words: 14,635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4262211
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/captivation/pseuds/captivation
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Every story needs a monster. AU, Tate is alive.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Crash

**Author's Note:**

> This is my pride and joy. It's heavy at the beginning, but ultimately a story of love and triumph over evil.

To an outsider, the Murder House would seem like the worst thing that had happened to Violet Harmon. But an outsider wouldn’t be able to see the pain in Violet, simmering underneath her skin, slipping out of the cuts on her arms. Violet couldn’t keep the sadness and anger away, no matter how many times she slid the razor through her skin. Because something happened to Violet before she even left Boston.  
  
She was only 15. Her parents were still happy; her mom was still pregnant. The room next to Violet’s was painted light yellow, a crib on one end, a changing table on the other. Violet had been painting a mural of a sunny meadow on one wall. She had seen it in a dream, and she couldn’t deny her mom this. Violet had always been embarrassed by her artistic talent, but the light in her mother’s eyes as she stood in front of the then empty wall was too much for Violet. How could she openly deny her mother something that would make her so happy?  
  
So Violet began painting the mural, the mural that caused everything. Violet had run out of some paint color—it’s was vermillion, she’ll never forget—so her and her mom and her unborn brother had driven to the art store in town.  
  
That drive was the last happy time she shared with her mother. They listened to The Tallest Man On Earth and bonded over their love for his voice, and scoffed at how Ben hated it. They passed a baby boutique and Vivien looked hopefully at Violet.  
  
“Mom, you have so much baby shit, I want to get back to painting,” Violet whined.  
  
“Vi, please don’t say that word, but fine. We’ll go some other day.” Violet looked at her mom behind the wheel, her skin glowing with pregnancy hormones, and smiled.  
  
Vivien waited in the car while Violet ran into the store, buying two tubes of vermillion, because meadows really did have an awful lot of grass.  
  
While she was waiting in line to pay, Violet noticed a young guy, maybe 25, watching her. She was creeped out, but thought nothing of it, until he followed her out of the store. She got in the car and fought against her fear, not wanting to worry her mother.  
  
They were almost home, and her mother was talking about how wonderful pregnancy was—she had forgotten since Violet—when a car veered into their lane. Violet yelled, and her mother stomped on the brakes, swerving to the right. Their car smashed against the guard rail and flipped, crashing down a slight hill and finally stopping upside down against a tree. Violet was unconscious, and she barely remembers what it was like, turning over and over down the hill. She only woke up when someone pulled her out of the car.  
  
“Mom?” she mumbled, her head pounding. She opened her eyes enough to see her mom still behind the wheel, blood on her swollen, pregnant stomach. “Mom! Wake up!” she screamed as she was dragged away. A hand clamped over her mouth, and she was picked up, her limbs held tightly, and carried to a car. Violet barely noticed that it was the same car that had swerved in front of her and her mom.  
  
Her mom, still in the car, hurt. She had to help her. But whenever she struggled, the person’s arms would squeeze her tightly, and the breath would be sucked out of her lungs.  
  
Then she was thrown into the backseat and a cloth was tied around her mouth, another around her feet, another around her hands. When that person got into the driver’s seat, Violet recognized him. It was the man from the art store. Her breath sped up, and her heart pounded desperately against her chest. He glanced back at Violet and grinned.  
  
The art store, she remembered. Vermillion. The mural. She would never finish it, because, in that grin, Violet saw pure menace, and she knew she would never be able to paint again, because this man was going to kill her. As he drove, Violet started to cry.  
  
She didn’t know it at the time, but someone else had witnessed the crash and called 911. They had gotten half of the license plate of the car that took Violet, but it wasn’t enough. Later, the police would go to the art store and talk to the teenager who had sold Violet the paint, and the nervous boy would give a detailed enough description to get a photo id.  
  
And Violet also didn’t know then, lying in the back of that car, that she would make it out alive, only to accidentally attempt to take her own life, by her own hand, one year later.


	2. Chapter 2: Day 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Violet survives day 1.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: rape

Violet doesn’t remember the car ride or being moved to a small shed. She does remember every moment of the 3 days that man held her captive. His name was Steven, Violet learned, and he was a 22 year old art student. He treated her nicely enough at first, and always cleaned the wounds he inflicted upon her.  
  
The wounds.  
  
The first day, Steven talked a lot. He put Violet in the queen-sized bed in the center of the room, naked, and paced around her for hours. Violet worried about his mental stability and her own safety. He said the most disturbing things; things about women, and their bodies, and Violet’s body, things that made her skin crawl under his probing eyes. He graphically described the things he wanted to do to her, and they weren’t normal. When people would question Violet’s acceptance of the disturbing things Tate had said, Violet just had to remember the dirty ramblings of Steven that first day.  
  
It’s surprising Violet didn’t vomit that day. Her stomach hardened into a little ball, and she denied the food he offered her.  
  
“I don’t want to hurt you, Violet,” he said as she turned away from the plate. “I don’t want to cause you any pain. You have to stay healthy. Will you please eat with me?” She looked into his eyes. Anywhere else, and Steven would have seemed friendly, because his eyes were kind, and a bit sad. In her head, she realized she would need her strength to survive whatever Steven was going to put her through.  
  
She moved to the edge of the bed, sitting up.  
  
“I’ll eat if you give me some clothes,” she whispered. They were the first words she had spoken. Steven smiled and set the plate in front of her, then fetched a large grey v neck t shirt from the closet opposite the bed. Violet slipped it over her head quickly, eager to cover her body so his eyes wouldn’t be able to molest her anymore.  
  
She picked up the plate of macaroni and cheese and brought a small bite to her mouth with a shaking hand.  
  
“I hope you don’t have any dietary restrictions,” Steven said, his voice calm and sweetly sickening. Violet shook her head and struggled to swallow. Her throat was tight, but she soon realized she was starving. Steven watched her eat with satisfaction.  
  
He took her plate when she finished, carrying it to the tiny kitchen area. Steven lingered at the foot of the bed for a while, just watching Violet, and she inched towards the head board.  
  
“Before I get started, I would like to make love to you,” he said casually, but it made Violet’s blood freeze, her heart stop, her muscles clench. She gripped the hem of the t shirt and held it down frantically as Steven undid his pants, then climbed onto the bed.  
  
“Please,” Violet whispered, “I’m only 15.”  
  
“Oh, you’re so innocent,” he replied, stroking her cheek. His eyes flashed with malice, then went blank.  
  
Steven let her keep the shirt on. He forced her to lie down and slid his underwear off, then covered her body with his own. He kissed Violet, and she tried to turn her face away, but he held her chin tightly. His other hand crept between Violet’s legs, and he sighed when he felt no wetness there.  
  
“That just won’t do,” Steven scolded. He reached for something on the nightstand and Violet took the opportunity to turn her head towards the other wall and clenched her eyes shut. Then Steven was pushing his dick into her, and it was slick, but it still hurt, because she was a virgin and so young and had barely even begun to touch herself there and this couldn’t be happening.  
  
She kept her face turned away and her body tense. It didn’t last long; Steven thrust harshly into her for only a few minutes before coming quietly.  
  
Violet hoped he would leave her then, but he only put his shirt and boxers back on, then swiped Violet’s crotch with a damp cloth. Violet was still staring at a spot on the wall as Steven rummaged under the bed. He eventually pulled out a shoe box, taking out what Violet quickly—in horror—realized to be a tattoo gun.  
  
She wanted to scream. She wanted to tell him to do anything else to her, anything but a tattoo that she would be stuck with forever, but her mouth was frozen.  
  
“I’m studying to be a tattoo artist,” Steven explained, “and you are going to be my first work of art.” He looked down at her lovingly, and then sat by her side, pulling her left leg into his lap.  
  
Steven worked for hours, switching to her right leg half way through, talking idly all the while. Violet cried silently, half from the pain, and half from the fear of having to live with these tattoos, if she even got out alive.  
  
Then he was done and there were bandages taped to her upper thighs. He handed her some aspirin from a large bottle and a glass of water. She took the pills quickly, hoping they would dull anymore pain to come. Steven lay next to her, and soon fell asleep. Violet did not; instead she remained still, every muscle tense where he was touching her.


	3. Chapter 3: Day 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day 2.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: rape

Steven woke early the next morning, when the sun was just beginning to peek through the curtains. Violet had stared at those curtains all night, struggling to take deep breaths and wondering what was outside the window. Steven sat up and stretched a bit, then kissed Violet on the cheek.  
  
“Did you sleep, Violet?” She shook her head. “Do you need to use the bathroom?” She nodded quickly, desperate to get away from Steven for just a few minutes. He helped her stand and walk to the tiny bathroom. She wanted to shove his hands off of her, but her thighs were burning and she was worried she would fall. Violet hurriedly closed the door so he wouldn’t follow her in. After using the toilet, Violet stood in front of the mirror.  
  
Her eyes were red-rimmed, and her hair was greasy, pressed flat against her head. Violet gripped the sink with two hands and closed her eyes.  
  
“You can do this,” she thought. “Just get out alive and get back to your mom and dad.” Anger consumed Violet suddenly. Who was this man to take Violet away from her family? He could rape her and mark her skin forever, but he couldn’t take away her family.  
  
But then Steven was pounding on the door and calling her name. Violet jumped, and opened the door slowly.  
  
“There you are. Would you like some breakfast?” He was smiling at her. No use making him mad.  
  
“Okay.” The second time she had spoken.  
  
They ate together on the bed again, and Violet felt less nauseous after. Steven checked the tattoos on her thighs then, but Violet closed her eyes, not yet ready to see what would stain her legs for the rest of her life. She worried about his hands being so close to her crotch, but he didn’t try anything, just looked over his work and smiled. His smile was so kind.  
  
“Are you going to kill me?” Violet asked softly. Steven grabbed her wrists.  
  
“I would never hurt you, Violet.” He lunged forward and kissed her, gripped her cheeks tightly. She was pushed flat on the bed and Steven’s heavy body crushed hers, his hands pulling her legs apart. Violet cried out when his hips ground against hers and the fresh tattoos on her thighs.  
  
For the first time, Violet cried. She cried as Steven thrust into her, not bothering with lube. One hand on the soft skin of her upper thigh kept her legs apart.  
  
“Stop, please stop, please, Steven,” she wailed. At the sound of his name, Steven froze. He pulled out of Violet and sat up, Violet rolled away, pulling her legs to her chest, her shoulders convulsing with sobs. She saw her mother still in the car as Steven pulled her away. She saw the unfinished mural on her baby brother’s wall. She saw her dad, all alone. “Please, let me go, please, I just want to be with my family.” Steven roughly pulled her to him and slapped her across the face.  
  
“I can’t let you go. I don’t care about your family. You belong with me now. No one else.” He climbed on top of her again, grunting as he raped her. Violet struggled against him, and Steven would hit or scratch her until she remained still.  
  
This was the difference between Steven and Tate. Tate never once hurt her, and never even touched her against her will. Never.  
  
When Steven was done, he threw Violet on her stomach, squeezing her waist when she tried to crawl away.  
  
“I’ll tie you up again if you don’t stop, Violet. I wasn’t going to hurt you, but you aren’t cooperating. I have to finish my work,” he spat in her ear. She stopped struggling, just not wanting to get hurt again.  
Violet cried softly into the sheets while Steven tattooed her back.  
  
“Violet, stop crying,” he yelled at her when he finished. She sobbed louder, completely terrified of him. Steven rolled her on her back and she screamed, the brand new tattoos on her back sending pain shooting to her entire body. “You have to be quiet! Stop screaming!” He slapped her across the face over and over. “I’m trying to make you beautiful!”  
  
Steven turned away suddenly and left, locking the door behind him. Violet sat up and buried her face in her hands, her back and thighs hurting. She just wanted to go back to her family.


	4. Day 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The final day and Violet's rescue.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: rape

Steven didn’t come back until the next morning. Violet fell asleep for a bit, but she couldn’t get comfortable with her new tattoos. When she was awake she worried about what Steven would do on the third day of her captivity. She couldn’t imagine him getting meaner, but he had caused a car crash, dragged her away, raped her, and covered her back with tattoos.  
  
Violet looked up in terror when the door opened. Steven stormed in and removed his pants and underwear, then pulled her into his lap, sitting on the bed. He held her hips and thrust up into her, thankfully not forcing her back into the mattress.  
  
Violet was silent. She had given up. No one was going to find her. She would be stuck here forever, a body for Steven to rape and scar. There was no point in fighting. Violet turned her face into her shoulder, not giving Steven the satisfaction of eye contact.  
  
He didn’t say a word as he raped her, then continued the tattoos, connecting the ones on her thighs to the massive one on her back, and adding some to her shoulders and the back of her neck. Violet didn’t speak either. She was almost used to the pain and buzz of the tattoo gun.  
  
Steven stared at her naked body for a long while, admiring his work, before taking her tiny hand and wrapping it around his dick, moving her hand with his own. Violet finally threw up, just barely missing the bed. Steven never stopped moving her hand. He was moaning loudly when the door was slammed open, coming off the hinges.  
  
Time moved slowly as Violet curled away from everything. Police swarmed in and Steven pulled a gun from under the bed. Someone yelled for him to drop it, but he didn’t move and the only sound was Violet sobbing, deep gasps, noises she had never made before. Then Steven pulled the trigger but he missed and he was on the ground and his stomach and chest were full of bullets and blood was dripping out of his mouth as he convulsed a few final times.  
  
Violet scrambled to put the shirt back on, and a female cop helped her, and carried her out of that shed. It was sunny outside, and a rather pleasant day. Violet wanted to die.


	5. The Move

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Much lighter. The Harmon's move to CA.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: talk of past abuse and self harm

“Great. So we’re the Addams family now,” I said, sizing up the monstrous “classic L.A. Victorian” that was supposed to save my family. But it was so fucking perfect: cheating dad, mom still lamenting her lost baby, kidnapped/raped/tattooed daughter. We were the Harmons, and we belonged in the Murder House.  
  
“Hey! Crabby pants! Come here!” My dad called, and waved me over. I ignored him. I found it hilarious that my dad thought I was just crabby. Clearly going through what I had only allowed me a few months of genuine sadness; now I was just crabby.  
  
I did change after what Steven did to me. I think anyone would. My mom was still in the hospital when the police found me, so my dad came to me almost immediately. He was crying the minute he walked in the door, and he quickly wrapped his arms around my back in a tight hug. I cried out and pushed him away, two hands flat on his chest.  
  
I froze, realizing this was the moment I had to tell him I was disgusting now. Thankfully, a doctor came in and asked him to leave, giving him a few more hours with his previous idea of me, his untouched little angel.  
  
Numb, I let doctors and other people in uniforms poke at my body, at the tattoos. I sat still while one of those doctors told my dad that I had been raped and my body was covered in ink. He cried, but I just stared at his hand clutching mine, the same hand that only hours ago had been around Steven’s dick.  
  
Sitting outside Murder House, I lit a cigarette. That was one of the many things that had changed about me. I didn’t smoke to be cool, like so many other kids my age. I liked it because it gave me something to do with my hand, the one that had touched Steven. I’d kind of stopped using it, letting it fall to my side while I did everything with my right hand.  
  
I started wearing long dresses and multiple sweaters, so people—myself included—wouldn’t see my body, and I even started cutting my arms so I would have something else to look at besides the tattoos. I think my parents knew about the cutting, but they never said anything to me. I wouldn’t have stopped even if they did. I had no clue why Steven did what he did to me, but it fucked me up big time.  
  
I relaxed against the brick wall behind me, blowing smoke out my nostrils.  
  
“I wish you wouldn’t smoke where I can see you,” my mom said from my left. I looked up at her smiling face and put out my cigarette. I loved my mother, and there was no reason to make her more sad. I noticed how flat her stomach had gotten, no trace of the child that had lived there for 7 months before being forced out after the car accident.  
  
I remember the look on my mom’s face as she told me the baby had died in the crash. Her hands were still over her stomach, even though there was nothing there to protect, she hadn’t been able to protect it. She had cried, and my dad had cried, but I just put my head back and wondered why Steven had chosen my family to destroy.  
  
I went home after a few days in the hospital and tried to learn how to live with my new body and hatred for my left hand and fear of the darkness between my legs. I also looked at my back and thighs for the first time. I was about to take my first shower, and I realized I wouldn’t be able to ignore my thighs anymore.  
  
I stood in front of the full length mirror in my old room and pulled my t shirt over my head. Before I lost momentum, I shoved my jeans off, and there they were. Standing there in just my pale pink underwear, I was pleasantly surprised, I was expecting the tattoos to be ugly and disturbing, because Steven was an ugly and disturbing person, but they were a simple flower pattern. Only in black, the design curved around my hips and down my thighs, ending in delicate branches of blossoms, with a few stray petals drifting to my knees. The branches twisted to my back and formed roots, growing into a massive tree. I couldn’t see it well, but the back of my neck featured an elegant bird with outstretched wings. Some of the upper branches crept onto my shoulders and down my arms a bit.  
  
It was beautiful. I couldn’t believe Steven had done it freehand, and so quickly. I hated that Steven had taken me, but these tattoos were gorgeous. My stomach immediately clenched. There was something wrong with me for liking them, something dirty. I started crying, and my mom walked in. I struggled to cover my chest and back at the same time, but she rushed towards me and held my arms, holding me still so she could examine my back. I sobbed, because I felt completely exposed. In that moment, I decided no one would ever see my tattoos. They were a private reminder of what had happened to me, and how I had survived it. It came from an ugly place, but this ink in my skin was beautiful, and I didn’t understand.  
  
My mom was crying as she held my arms, but I asked her to stop. She left and then I couldn’t hear her anymore.  
  
I thought I would be okay, since I had seen the tattoos and they weren’t awful, but then I went back to school. Everyone looked at me—because they knew I had been kidnapped—but the boys were the worst. They were just like Steven. I had no way of knowing who was going to hurt me. I only lasted a few days before I begged my parents to send me to a different school, anywhere the kids wouldn’t watch me like I was a wild animal.  
  
Then my dad had the affair, and we were on our way to California, a “happy” family again.  
  
Squishing the cigarette with my toes, I stood and followed my mom into the Murder House.


	6. Touch, part 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Violet meets Tate, and learns about her body.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: talk of past abuse and self harm

Sometimes my dad tried to talk to me about my feelings, but honestly, I was alright. So I covered my body and I cut myself sometimes. I thought that was pretty good. I painted every day, and I was even starting to feel safe. School sucked, but school sucked everywhere.  
  
One thing I still hadn’t gotten over was sex stuff. Before Steven, I had barely begun to think about it. I had read a bunch of stuff online about touching yourself, and when I went to try it, just the feel of anything between my legs sent this intense wave through my limbs, and I remember thinking, was that it? And then Steven took me.  
  
Ever since then, just thinking about sex would make me nauseous, and I would start to see Steven hovering over me, raping me. But there was no way I was going to talk to my dad about that. Not even my mom. No way.  
  
Tate changed everything.  
  
That first time we met, me in the bathroom, him catching me, was like holding a lit match to a fuse. The spark would travel down the string until it exploded, and I couldn’t tell if the explosion would be good or bad.  
  
“You’re doing it wrong,” he said tauntingly from the doorway, my head snapped up, my wrist dripped crimson blood onto the sink.  
  
“How’d you get in here? I imagined this boy with dark eyes taking me away again.  
  
“If you’re trying to kill yourself, cut vertically. They can’t stitch that up.”  
  
“I know.” I’d known that for months, but it came out petulant, defiant.  
  
“Also, if you’re trying to kill yourself, you might try locking the door.” He started to back out of the room.  
  
“Who says I’m trying to kill myself?” I called to the closing door. The boy appeared again, obviously intrigued.  
  
“So why are you cutting yourself then?”  
  
“Why are you in my house?” I moved to lean my back against the sink.  
  
“I’m one of your dad’s patients.” I smiled. If my dad knew I was talking to one of his patients, he would be furious. But I was so crabby. “I cut myself too.” He rolled his sleeves up, almost proud.  
  
“Why?”  
  
“My mom’s a cocksucker.”  
  
“Literally or metaphorically?”  
  
“Literally.” I nodded. “I’ve gotta go, Violet. I’m glad you’re not trying to kill yourself.” Tate left the doorway, and I rushed after him.  
  
“How do you know my name?” I called, but he was already gone, the front door banging shut.  
  
I spent the next few days painting in my room and wondering about the boy in the doorway. Since I didn’t care and my parents were kind of scared of me, I was just painting right on my walls. I wasn’t doing a mural; I didn’t think I could ever do a mural, not after my last one. I would just wake up, have a snack and some tea in the backyard, then paint whatever came to mind. The wall facing my bed became a mess of random scenes: trees reaching to the ceiling, cats, twisted bodies with grabbing fingers that pressed and dragged against their flesh. Sometimes I would catch myself painting my tattoos. In those moments I would feel an unsettling sense of kinship with Steven, almost like I understood him. Then I would slash black paint over the pattern and take a break, change the music and read a little Keats.  
  
Just a few days after I met Tate in the bathroom, I was sitting in the kitchen, waiting while Moira made me a cup of hot chocolate. I liked Moira. She was quiet, but the few words she would say were soaked in knowledge, and I envied how wise she was.  
  
I knew my father was in with a patient, and I was trying my best not to care. But as I passed his office on my way upstairs, I heard Tate’s voice. I paused, peeking around the corner, knowing it was so wrong.  
  
“Everyone can get better, Tate,” my dad said, and I smiled. Tate. Now I knew his name.  
  
“I was afraid my big dick wouldn’t work,” he said and there it was. My stomach exploded into a ball of heat. And my dad laughed.  
  
“What?”  
  
“That’s why I didn’t take the meds. I was afraid my dick wouldn’t work.” He paused. “Because I met someone.” Tate’s eyes swept to mine, and he held my gaze for a few agonizing seconds, before I bolted up to my room, abandoning my cup next to my paints. I fell onto my bed and closed my eyes, and there was his face, looking right at me because he knew I was there, and I knew he was thinking about me in a sexual way, and it didn’t make me sick; it made my thighs shake. I stuck my right hand under the waistband of my skirt and into my underwear, and I was so wet and it had been so long. One of my tiny fingers slipped inside of me, and it was almost too much and I almost came right there, but the pad of my thumb barely pressed on my clit, and I imagined Tate’s weight tilting my bed and him gently pulling my hands away, replacing them with his own. In my head, Tate leaned down and kissed me sweetly and his fingers were so much bigger than mine. He would take my bottom lip between his teeth and then my thighs were clenching around my hand and my back was arching, pushing my head back into the mattress.  
  
My eyes flew open and I was genuinely surprised Tate was not there with me. My mouth felt strange, and I realized I had bitten my bottom lip. There were harsh indents from my teeth, and I ran my tongue over them.  
  
I then realized Steven hadn’t crossed my mind once, and I smiled at the ceiling triumphantly.  
  
I lay still for a while, my hand still resting inside my underwear, and I thought I could sleep there forever. But I got up and went to the bathroom, cleaned my sticky fingers and looked at my face in the mirror, checking to see if I looked different, because I felt different.


	7. School

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Violet deals with school.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: talk of past abuse and self harm.

We were in my room, listening to music and comparing scars. Tate had so many; he’d been cutting so much longer. I pointed to my newest cut, the one he had caught me doing, saying it was from the first day at my new school, and how it sucks there.  
  
And it did suck. That bitch suddenly screaming in my face.  
  
“You don’t know me, why are you doing this?” I’d asked, because she really had no clue. I knew that if I told her I had been kidnapped and raped, and only smoked because I was disgusted with my left hand and the dick it had touched, she would be so uncomfortable she would never look me in the eye again. But I knew I couldn’t just tell her everything. So I spit in her face, hoping things wouldn’t get out of control, and ran away laughing, because it really was funny how I was a target everywhere I went. Just so goddamn fair.  
  
“You only cut your left arm?” Tate asked.  
  
“Yeah, I don’t really use it, so, I figure…” I trailed off. I glanced at my bed, thought of my previous afternoon, hand shoved down my underwear. I blushed, finding it hysterical how close Tate was to my den of recently-discovered sin.  
  
“Why don’t you use it?”  
  
“How did you know my name?” He smiled, guilty.  
  
“I overheard your parents.”  
  
“Creep.”  
  
“Why don’t you use your left hand, Violet?” I sighed. I had hoped he’d forgotten.  
  
I weighed the pros and cons of telling him the truth. I didn’t even know him. But he was cute and nice, and I felt safe with him, because he might have been more messed up than I was. Looking away, I sighed.  
  
“I don’t use my left hand…” I began, then stopped. “I’ll go back to the beginning.” I didn’t look at Tate as I told him everything. I just stared out the window at the birdhouse there, watching a dark bird fly around it. “So the only part of him I every really touched was his dick, and it just grosses me out. It’s like I can still feel it on my palm. Like I always will. So I just kind of stopped using it.” I wiped my eyes casually, catching the few tears before they fell. Tate was silent, and I finally looked back to him.  
  
He was fuming. Fists clenched, eyes dark, jaw twitching. “Tate, it’s okay, I’m okay now,” I said, desperate to calm him down. I wasn’t afraid of him, but I was worried he was going to do something stupid.  
  
Shaking his head, Tate stood up and stormed out of my room and down the stairs. I called after him quietly, but I couldn’t have my dad hear me. I rushed back to my room and to the window, just in time to see Tate running down the sidewalk. I didn’t understand why he was mad, and I just wanted him to talk to me.  
  
I fell onto my bed and let my shoulders shake with sobs I had been holding back for too long.  
  
I must have fallen asleep, because next thing I knew, the bed was sinking behind my back, and everything smelled like a boy. I rolled over, and there was Tate, lying on his back and staring at the ceiling.  
  
“How did you get in here?” I asked softly, not really caring, but curious.  
  
“I snuck in through the basement. I used to live here. I’m sorry I ran away. I was so mad and I didn’t know what to say. I trashed my room.”  
  
“Why were you angry?”  
  
“I didn’t like thinking about someone hurting you. You’re so clean and kind and pure. You didn’t deserve it.”  
  
“I’m not pure,” I breathed. Tate turned his entire body to me.  
  
“No matter what that sick fuck did to you, you are still pure. Because that’s who you are.” No one had ever said anything like that to me before. Coming from Tate, I believed it, even though he had just met me. I believed Tate saw the good in me, and decided to seize this opportunity.  
  
“Do you want to see the tattoo?” I sat up and went to pull my shirt over my head. Tate stopped me.  
  
“You don’t have to.”  
  
“No, I want to. No one’s ever seen it before, except my mom and I. It’s actually really pretty.”  
  
Sitting topless in front of him, I started to worry. But then his fingers gingerly swept my hair off my neck and over one shoulder. He touched my entire back, and I sat still, one arm over my breasts, and enjoyed the touch of another human.  
  
“This is gorgeous,” he mumbled.  
  
“I know, right? Is it sick that I like it?”  
  
“I don’t think so. Can you put your shirt on?”  
  
“What’s the matter, you can’t hold a conversation with a topless girl?”  
  
“My hormones are raging out of control,” he deadpanned. I fixed my shirt and lay back down next to him. “Why did you tell me all that? Why me?”  
  
“I don’t know. You’re different. I trust you. I don’t know, Tate. Was it too much?”  
  
He looked at me and shook his head, smiling. He had the cutest dimples. As we just looked at each other, I wanted to kiss him, and I think he wanted to kiss me, but I was nervous and he was worried about me, so he took my right hand in his and held it tightly between us.

I actually smiled at my mom the next morning. Tate had left before midnight, I think because he was still wary of me. We had waited until my parents went to bed before stumbling down the stairs, muffling our giggles on our sleeves. I was having fun with Tate. I hadn’t had fun in a long time. I watched him walk out the gate and turn right, send me a quick wave, then enter the house right next to mine. My mouth dropped open.  
  
In the morning, when I was still trying to figure out how Tate had neglected to mention he lived next to me, I ran into my mom in the kitchen and smiled at her.  
  
“Good morning, Violet! Do you want some breakfast? I made scrambled eggs,” she offered, and my instinct was to say no, but why? So I nodded.  
  
We ate together, and she asked me about school, if I had made any friends. I had to hold back my scoff. And when she dropped me off, she wished me luck, and I walked away grinning, because these girls would never hurt me more than Steven, and they thought they were so important.  
  
When the leader, Leah, attacked me later, I was calm. When she had me flat on the ground, I grabbed her face with two hands, hard.  
  
“You don’t know me,” I said again. “You know nothing about my life. You can’t hurt me. I promise you that.” Then I burned her with that cigarette. I ran off, enjoying how confused she had looked, and collided with Tate.  
  
“Hey, Violet, did that bitch hurt you?” He fussed over the cut on my forehead. I wiped away the blood with the back of my hand.  
  
“No, I’m fine. I don’t think she’ll bug me anymore.” Tate glared at the crowd around us. “Can we go somewhere?”  
  
He tucked me under his arm. “Yeah, sure.”  
  
Tate and I spent the rest of the day at a park near our houses, laughing and pushing each other on the swings.  
  
“You said you lived in my house. When?” I asked when we were drifting on two swings, side by side.  
  
“I was, 3, when we moved in, and we just moved out last year.”  
  
“Also, way to tell me you live next door.”  
  
“It never came up. But there’s something about that house, Violet. It’s dangerous. I got out just in time.”  
  
“Yeah, right, Tate.”  
  
“No, I’m serious, Violet. Have you gone into the basement yet?”  
  
“No.”  
  
“Don’t. Please.” Tate reached out and took my hand. He looked desperate.  
  
“Tate, what’s wrong? It’s just a house.”  
  
“It’s not!” he yelled, apologized. “I started going crazy in there, Violet. I had dreams, about shooting our classmates, about setting my mom’s boyfriend on fire…That’s why I see your Dad. I left, and I didn’t go back. It will take you, Violet.” I didn’t say anything. I didn’t want to believe him, but I could feel something strange in that house, and Tate knew it.  
  
We stayed on the swings and let the wind move us, our hands still together. When we would get out of synch, Tate’s grip on my hand would tighten, pulling me back in line with him, pulling me back to him.


	8. The Basement

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tate shows Violet the evil in her basement.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: self harm

Screaming, from the basement. I flew down the steps, and then Leah, the bitch from school, knocked into me. The screams were coming from her, and there were 3 deep scratches down her cheek. I watched her stumble out the door, then looked to the basement door, where she had come from. Tate had told me not to go down there, but I was so curious, and fuck it. Halfway down the steps, I saw Tate.  
  
“Violet, I told you not to come down here!” he said to me.  
  
“Why? So you can attack our classmates in peace?”  
  
“No—I didn’t attack her—She hurt you!” He pulled at his hair desperately.  
  
“I told you she wouldn’t be bugging me anymore.” I told him, crossing my arms. I started moving down the steps again, but Tate rushed towards me, pushing me out the door, back into the hallway.  
  
Tate’s hands pressed harshly into my shoulders. “I did this for you.”  
  
I thought about all of those therapy offers from my dad, shopping days from my mom. I hadn’t taken their help back in Boston, and I wouldn’t take Tate’s help now. “I didn’t ask you to do that! I don’t need anyone’s help.” I wrenched his hands off of my shoulders, shoving him away. It had been a mistake, telling him. Never again. “Get out, Tate, and stop breaking into my house. You don’t live here anymore,” I spat as I walked away, turning the corner and going back upstairs. I pressed my back against my bedroom door, listening. Nothing, and then—  
  
“I THOUGHT YOU TRUSTED ME”  
  
—and a deep, shuddering breath in. The front door slammed. I slid to the floor, finally crying, because clearly there was something in the basement, and Tate was using it to hurt people.  
  
Angry at the tears on my cheeks, I stalked to the bathroom, slapping them away with my right hand. I dug out my hidden razors blades and looked down at my stupid left hand and—quick—sliced the razor across my palm, regretting it instantly.  
  
About an hour later, when my mom got home, I crawled downstairs, cradling my hand, because I was only a 16 year old girl and my hand hurt and I missed my mom.  
  
She didn’t ask me what happened. I mumbled something about breaking a glass, but I know she didn’t believe me. She cleaned the cut gently, and wrapped it in gauze. I don’t know what I had been thinking, it was too deep, and across my whole palm.  
  
I stood up to leave, but my mom pulled me into a tight hug. I squeezed her back, wishing she hadn’t lost her baby. I missed how close we used to be. She pulled back to kiss my forehead, and I felt like I was 10 years old again.  
  
“I just had a bad day. Don’t worry about me, mom,” I murmured.  
  
A few days later, I was dreaming about the park with Tate. I was on a swing and he was standing in front of me, my hands in his. We were just talking, but then he was kissing me and I could feel it in my toes.  
  
“Excuse me, ma’am, I’m hurt and I’m needing some help,” he whispered against my lips.  
  
I woke up and froze. My eyes searched the room for those dickbags that had tried to kill me and my mom. I knew they were dead. But everything is scary when you’ve had a bad dream and your room is pitch black. I closed my eyes again and there was Tate, holding me tightly against the wall, telling me to get them to the basement. Maybe those freaks would have left us alone if they had found Tate and I having sex, there in the kitchen, if he had just taken me right then, like the murderers in the other room were just some sick role-play.  
  
I sat up, surprised at myself for even considering sex. Then I ran to the bathroom and threw up, staring at the bathtub. I’d almost died when Steven took me, and I’d almost died in that bathtub, but I hadn’t. Tate had saved me.  
  
Back in my room, I started to paint to pass the time until school. I knew my parents would let me stay home, or I could just stay in my room and they wouldn’t notice. But I needed to see Tate, and he actually had stopped sneaking into the house.  
  
I ended up getting a step ladder from the hall closet so I could paint a patch of sky in the corner near the door. When it was done and I was about to go to school, I stepped back. The colors I had used were neither light nor dark, but I liked the uncertainty, like it could be day or night.  
  
I went to school in the dress I had been painting in, not caring because I’d almost been killed—again. And I hadn’t even made it to my locker when I saw Tate’s blond curls coming towards me. He saw me, and waved to me through the idiots we went to school with.  
  
“Let’s go,” he said, holding out his hand to me.  
  
“Where?”  
  
“Anywhere.”  
  
“Tate, this is school. I’m not just going to leave.” He raised one eyebrow at me.  
  
I took his hand and we walked out.  
  
We ended up at the same park. I had climbed on top of one of those big, geometric dome things, and Tate was sitting in the woodchips underneath me.  
  
“How did you know those people were in my house?” I asked out of nowhere.  
  
“I was watching your front door. I saw them go in.”  
  
“Did you kill them?”  
  
“No, not me. Except that bitch who ate the cupcake. I killed her.” He tossed some woodchips away casually. “The house does that to me.”  
  
“Did you hurt Leah?”  
  
“No, not me,” he repeated. “I told you, it’s the house. If you die in there, you don’t get to leave, Violet. The basement’s fucked.” I looked down at him through the bars.  
  
“Are you trying to tell me my house is full of ghosts?”  
  
“Yes. They killed those freaks. Moira’s dead. She was our maid, and my mom found my dad fucking her, before he left, so she shot Moira in the head.”  
  
“Her eye?”  
  
“Yep.”  
  
“But why the basement?”  
  
“That’s where it all started.” Tate said as he climbed up next to me. “The original owners, Charles and Nora Montgomery, built the house. They needed money, so the husband set up his ‘practice’ in the basement, performing abortions on young girls. A boyfriend of one of the girls found out, and kidnapped the Montgomery’s son, Thaddeus, and returned him in pieces.” He glanced at me like I should be scared. I stared back at him. “Charles put the baby back together, and Thaddeus miraculously came back to life, but as a monster. That’s what’s in the basement. Nora shot Charles and herself when she saw what Thaddeus had become.” Tate touched a paint stain on my dress. “Now everyone who lives there, dies.”  
  
“You didn’t die.”  
  
“I told you I got out just in time.”  
  
“Why are you telling me this, Tate?”  
  
“Because you need to get out of there.”  
  
“I’m not scared.”  
  
“Well you should be! Those people that broke in are nothing compared to the ghosts there. I can’t protect you from them.”  
  
“Did you really kill that girl?” I asked, looking at him sideways.  
  
“I cut her in half with a fucking axe.”  
  
“Is she the first person you’ve killed?”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“Why didn’t you let the ghosts do it?”  
  
“She was going to hurt you,” he said, like it was obvious. I looked away.  
  
“Would you be telling me this if I wasn’t a 16 year old girl?”  
  
“Probably not.” I smiled, feeling girly. “You deserve better, Violet, after what happened to you.”  
  
“You should have seen the look on that chick’s face when she saw my tattoo. Priceless.” Tate laughed and laced his fingers through mine.  
  
“What were you painting?” he asked, observing the paint on my knuckles.  
  
“Just my walls. You’ve seen my room. What’s your house like?”  
  
“Well, my mom refuses to decorate, since she thinks it’s only a matter of time until we’re back in your house.”  
  
“She comes over all the time. It’s weird.”  
  
“She’s a…”  
  
“Cocksucker, I know.”  
  
“I was going to say self-obsessed failure of a mother. But she is a cocksucker.” We hung around the park a bit longer, and Tate answered every question about the house I could think of. I wasn’t scared of ghosts, but Tate was so serious about me getting out of there. And his concern seemed genuine, not like the doctors and therapists I saw after Steven. I felt like I could actually accept Tate’s help. He literally killed someone for me.  
  
We eventually got hot, and he suggested we go back to his house. Tate made some comment about my weight, and I bet him he couldn’t carry me to his house. He stopped and turned away from me.  
  
“Get on.”  
  
“What? Tate, come on, let’s go.”  
  
“Get on my back.”  
  
“No.”  
  
“You said I couldn’t carry you home, and I can.” I almost stomped my foot, but I just sighed and hopped onto his back. He held my thighs and I wrapped my arms around his chest, surprisingly hard. I thought it was funny how his hands were touching the tattoos on my thighs that he hadn’t even seen.  
  
Tate started walking, not even the least bit affected by my weight. Suddenly, he wrenched my left hand away from his chest and held it tightly in his hand, letting go of my thigh. I yelped, and pressed my free hand to his stomach and wrapped my leg around his hip, scrabbling to hold on like a spider monkey. I tried to pull my hand out of his grasp, because he was studying it so carefully. I had taken the bandage off yesterday and the cut was still pink and scabby.  
  
“Where did this cut come from?” he asked angrily.  
  
“Nowhere, let go.”  
  
“Did you cut your hand?”  
  
“No, let go.”  
  
“Violet, stop. Did you do this?”  
  
“Yes, fine, stop looking at my hand.” He let go immediately, as if he just remembered how I felt about that hand.  
  
“Why?” I rested my forehead against the back of his neck and sighed, because I did not want to talk about this, but looked up right away, because he smelled way too good.  
  
“It was right after I found you and Leah in the basement. I was upset.”  
  
“I’m sorry. I just couldn’t stand her hurting you.”  
  
“I know you just wanted to help, but can you not hurt people in the basement anymore?”  
  
“Fine.” He smiled, and I looked at the cute dimple on his cheek, and decided that I deserved Tate. After Steven, the only people there for me were my parents, and they had other problems. Tate was here, and wanted to help me, and he was cute. So I leaned forward and kissed him quickly on the cheek. I watched his smile grow and let myself breathe in his smell again.


	9. Touch, part 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Violet and Tate learn how to touch each other.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: talk of past abuse

Tate didn’t put me down when we reached his house. He leaned down so I could turn the door knob, and a voice yelled his name from a room down the hall. Tate said nothing in response. A middle aged, thin, balding man peeked out from a doorway, doing a double take at me.  
  
“Shouldn’t you be in school?” the man asked.  
  
“Fuck you,” Tate answered.  
  
Tate slammed the door to his room and started pacing at the foot of his bed, me still on his back. He picked up a mug from his desk and hurled it at the wall. It shattered, and chunks of ceramic littered the floor, the last dregs of coffee sticking to the white wall.  
  
I slid off his back.  
  
“Tate, what the fuck? Who was that?” He was still pacing.  
  
“He wasn’t supposed to be home. You shouldn’t have to meet him.”  
  
“Who, Tate?”  
  
“Lawrence,” he drawled. “The cock my mother is sucking.”  
  
“You really don’t need to protect me from everything.”  
  
“I know, Vi, I just really fucking hate him.” I knelt down and gathered up the pieces of the mug. Tate joined me, and I noticed he was shaking. He tossed the shards into the trash and stood, walking away from me. He ran his shaking hands over his face and through his hair, breathing heavy.  
  
“Tate, Jesus, come here,” I said and wrapped my arms tightly around his back. He folded his body around mine, and I rested my cheek against his chest, thankful for our height difference. He was so skinny, but so tall and just bigger than me, and I felt safe. Tate pressed his warm mouth to the top of my head.  
  
I held him until he calmed down, until his back stopped shaking.  
  
“I win. I carried you all the way home,” he said eventually. I pulled away from him, and cold swept across my chest, already wondering when I could hold him close to me again.  
  
“Alright, what do you win?” Tate opened his mouth to speak, but just cupped my cheek, moving towards me. I awkwardly shuffled closer to him, and his hand threaded into my hair, meeting the other one. I closed my eyes, and when I opened them Tate was right there, looking at me, and I could feel his breath on my mouth. His eyes were sad and hopeful, and our lips touched—once—twice—and we both gulped in air, surging into each other, our mouths meeting, consuming.  
  
I moved Tate’s hands to my hips. He moved them right back to my hair. Again to my hips, back to my hair.  
  
“Tate. Touch me.” His mouth just covered mine again. I tried to press my body to his, but he was so tall, and leaning over me.  
  
He was just standing there, kissing me gently. I wanted heat, friction, that pull towards another person, attraction. Tate was the first person I had kissed—touched—since Steven. I just wanted to feel again.  
  
I held the back of Tate’s head with my right hand, tight, keeping my left safely at my side, and pulled his bottom lip into my mouth.  
  
“Fucking touch me,” I hissed. “Why won’t you touch me?”  
  
He pulled away and backed into his desk. I sighed.  
  
“Am I the first person you’ve kissed since Steven?” Take asked, looking sideways at the wall.  
  
“Yes.” He groaned, his head falling, his shoulders collapsing, and I understood.  
  
“Goddamnit, Tate, you don’t need to protect me. How many times do I have to tell you that?” I seethed, and turned to leave. Tate caught me by my left hand, pulling me back. My heart skipped a beat and I ripped my hand away and back to my side.  
  
“I’m sorry,” Tate mumbled, hanging his head again. I wanted to grab his stupid curls and force him to look at me. “That’s why!” he cried suddenly, waving his arms. “I can’t hurt you, Violet! I’ll never forgive myself.”  
  
I flopped onto his bed. “Jesus, Tate, I’m not a piece of china. I’ve been fucked up and sad and masochistic and anxious and just plain scared for so long. I just want to be happy again. Can you just be happy with me?” Tate made a sound in the back of his throat and fell towards me, dipping his head to catch my lips with his.  
  
After that day, Tate and I stumbled through the awkwardness of our first sexual encounters together. Tate was adamant about moving frustratingly slow, and sometimes it made me want to bash his head in, but I did appreciate it. I was lucky to be doing this with Tate, instead of some jerk who would get his dick wet the first chance he got. Tate continuously surprised me with his kindness. He treated me like a princess, but not too much. He’d taken to calling me “tea cup,” which I adored. We spent our days laughing through classes, then goofing around at the park or the beach, just being kids. It was the most normal I had felt in months.  
  
My parents noticed I was happier. That day Tate and I had first kissed, I had gone home, my hair a mess and my cheeks flushed. My mother was in the kitchen, baking, when I stumbled in.  
  
“Violet? Everything alright?”  
  
“I kissed a boy,” I blurted. My mom grinned and put a hand to her chest.  
  
“Who!?”  
  
“Tate, mom, who else?” Both her and my dad knew Tate well and liked him, despite his mother, and despite my dad continuing to treat him.  
  
“Oh, Vi, that’s wonderful! How do you feel?”  
  
“Good,” I said, fidgeting. “I feel really good. Kind of happy?”  
  
“Good! Happy, wonderful!” My mom was smiling so hard, it made me smile. She came towards me and hugged me for the longest time.  
  
When she released me, I hurried to my room with a fresh-baked cupcake and painted a massive field of wild flowers behind my bed.  
  
Because of Tate’s constant nagging, I started discussing moving with my parents. I didn’t say Tate was behind it all, because I knew they felt the badness in the house. They were resistant, but I was slowly guilting them into it.  
  
Tate wouldn’t go in the house, and didn’t even like me sleeping there.  
  
“What do you want me to do, Tate? Sleep here?” He winked at me. “Tate, come on.” But I felt the tingle between my legs.  
  
“Have your parents been listening more?”  
  
“They have. I’m surprised. Weird shit keeps happening.”  
  
“Like what?”  
  
Like the crying I kept hearing in the basement, and the flash of a person disappearing around a corner, the pops and giggles of children playing.  
  
“Do your parents see stuff too?”  
  
“My dad is sleep-walking. My mom hears the crying. It drives her nuts. She thinks it’s her baby. Oh, shit, did I tell you she’s pregnant?”  
  
Tate sat up quickly, jostling his bed. “Violet! For how long?”  
  
“A few months, I’m not sure.”  
  
“Oh my God. This is bad. You’ve gotta get out of there. Soon. We need a plan.” I sat up next to him, fingering his hair.  
  
“Well, while you come up with a plan, can we maybe make out a little?”  
  
“This is serious, Violet.” But he turned his head to me.  
  
“I know, but I like you.” I pulled his shirt over his head.  
  
“Violet,” he whispered, then kissed me, warm and hard. I moved over him, straddling his thighs, and felt his bare shoulders for the first time. I loved his shoulders, strong and perfect for hugging.  
  
As we kissed, I subconsciously moved closer to him, pressing my hips against his abdomen. Since I knew Tate wouldn’t do it, I peeled of my sweaters and t shirt, leaving my skirt. Tate pulled my bare chest into his, spreading his hot fingers on my back.  
  
“There’s more tattoo you haven’t seen,” I mumbled against his lips.  
  
“Where?” In response, I hitched my skirt up to my waist. Struggling somewhat, I got my tights off and tossed them away. I settled back over Tate, who touched my thighs delicately, wide-eyed. “It’s so detailed, so fragile.” I put a palm on his cheek.  
  
“I’m sorry I’m not pure for you.”  
  
“Violet, you’re the purest human in the whole world. Why are you worrying about that now?”  
  
“I’m not a virgin and you are.” My voice was two inches tall.  
  
“That doesn’t matter, Vi. And you’ve never had sex, not real sex.”  
  
“You’re right, I know you’re right. I just wish things were different.”  
  
“Me too, Teacup.” I smiled at the nickname. Tate kissed me again, and I decided this was the day. I wanted him to touch me. One of his hands was at the back of my neck, tracing the bird. The other was creeping around my stomach, past my still left arm, and to my ribs, grazing the underside of my breast. “Is this okay?” I nodded quickly. His palm covered my breast, fitting perfectly. He squeezed a few times, dragging his palm over my nipple. I let out a tiny, high pitched gasp. “Fuck, Violet,” he murmured, “you’re perfect.”  
  
In this position, our faces were exactly level, and I looked him right in the eye as I moved his hand down, between my legs. On his own, Tate flattened his palm against the wet mess that was my underwear.  
  
“This is it,” I said confidently. “We’re going to be new. Together.” With that, Tate nudged my underwear aside and dipped his fingers in the wetness seeping out of me. He didn’t waste any time, just slid one finger inside me. I sunk down onto him. “One more,” I whined. Tate groaned, long and low, and added a finger.  
  
I moved over his hand, trying to get as close to him as possible, feeling the soft hair by his forehead.  
  
“You win, Teacup,” Tate whispered in my ear. “You beat the dick that hurt you. He means nothing.”  
  
“Tate, shit, thank you so much.”  
  
That moment with Tate was so fucking sappy, and sickeningly sweet, and perfect. His fingers buried in my cunt, my lips on his neck, planting tiny kisses.  
  
I came a minute later, rasping out a held breath, and Tate removed his fingers, but I kept my chest pressed to his. It was simple, bare skin against bare skin, but I couldn’t imagine anything better in the world.


	10. Halloween

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Violet experiences her first Halloween in the Murder House.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: past and present abuse, self harm

“The dead can walk freely on Halloween,” Tate said from next to me. We were on the beach, just watching the waves in the afternoon sunlight.  
  
“What do you mean? Ghosts have no problem walking freely in my house every day.”  
  
“That’s different. The ghosts can leave your house on Halloween, and other ghosts, ones who didn’t die in the murder house, can roam.” Tate’s arm tightened around my shoulders.  
  
“Are you saying my house is probably empty right now?”  
“Well, Thaddeus didn’t go anywhere, but, otherwise, probably.” I smiled. Moira could go wherever she wanted, and the twin boys could get into trouble elsewhere.  
  
“That’s nice for them.” Tate looked at me, puzzled. “Some of those ghosts are perfectly nice. They don’t deserve to be stuck there all the time.”  
  
“You’re so nice.” I scoffed, remembering how great it was to spit in that bitch’s face.  
  
Tate’s fingers tickled the underside of my chin, turning my face to his, and kissed me.  
  
Even though it was Halloween and I could be spending time in my house free of ghosts, I lay down and pulled Tate over me. He hovered, tense. No matter what I said, Tate was always the slightest bit tense, like he didn’t want to startle me, or make me think he was taking advantage of me. Like I didn’t know he was a boy, a teenage boy, who just wanted sex. Sometimes I wished he would just take charge; take of my clothes and his own, force my legs, and plunge into the warmth between my warm, tattooed thighs. As he kissed me on Halloween, the day the dead can walk freely, I decided this was it. Time for someone to take charge.  
  
“I want to.” My tiny hand slid down his torso, just hitting the rough denim of his jeans and the hot bulge underneath, before he yanked my hand away, snapping ‘no,’ hurt. I looked up at him, still so close to me.  
  
“Sorry.”  
  
“Tate, I’m ready.”  
  
“Violet, I want to be with you so bad. You know you’re the first girl I’ve felt this way about.” He moved off me. “Maybe it’s the meds your Dad gave me. They do that, you know.”  
  
“Bullshit,” I sneered, remembering the heat of pure sex in my palm. Tate pulled at his hair, something I found incredibly sexy, but worried me too. He only did it when something was wrong.  
  
I sat up, startling Tate. His hands fell to his sides as I threw my self over him, straddling one of his legs. I kissed him so he wouldn’t talk, because he talked too much, and I just wanted to feel all of him. Tate’s reluctant hands found my waist and squeezed. Slipping my tongue against his neck, I ground my crotch against his thigh. Tate jerked my body forward, and I groaned when I felt his dick against my knee.  
  
Tate let me soak his jeans with the wetness between my legs, until I was shaking and making embarrassing little noises. He started to speak, but I slapped my hand over his mouth, hard, then I was biting his shoulder and burrowing into his shirt, collapsing against him. I rested my forehead on his chest for a bit, catching my breath, before looking up to him, thinking I had won. I reached for the button his pants, tucking my left hand safely behind my back, but Tate stopped me again.  
  
“I said no, Teacup.” I wanted to punch him.  
  
“Fuck you, Tate.” I stood up and turned to leave.  
  
“Violet, don’t walk away.”  
  
“Why not, Tate? If you get to decide when we have sex, I get to decide when I want to walk away.”  
  
“I’m not deciding, Violet,” he growled, his eyes dark. “You keep acting like I’m moving slow because I don’t want to hurt you, but have you forgotten that I’m a virgin? “ My mouth gaped open. “I’m terrified, Violet. It’s a lot of pressure, you know, wanting to make love to you so I can show what it’s really like, but I have no fucking clue what I’m doing! I can’t mess this up. I can’t.” I wanted to tell him he didn’t need to worry, that just looking at him got me wet, that any time he touched me I fell a little bit more in love with him. But I knew that wasn’t what he wanted to hear.  
  
I wrapped my arms around his waist, hugging him tightly. “I’m sorry Tate. I took advantage of you.” I laughed. “I always thought this would be the other way around. You’re supposed to take advantage of me. I’m the weak one.”  
  
“Fuck that, Violet. You’re the strongest person I know.” I kissed his cheek.  
  
“Can we go home? I want to paint.” Tate nodded, but looked uneasy, like he usually did when I mentioned being in the house. “It’s Halloween, Tate. The house is empty. I’ll be fine. My parents are home. They’ll wonder where I am if I stay at your house. Just come over later, when they’re asleep.” Tate grumbled, but nodded and took my hand, and we walked back to our houses together, making fun of the sluts in “costume.”  
  
…  
  
My parents weren’t home when I got there, but I didn’t give it a second thought. I preferred it, frankly. Getting settled in my room with my paints and hot chocolate, two extra packets, I wondered what Tate was doing. Then I mentally smacked myself on the forehead for being so stupid and not thinking about Tate, and how sex would affect him. I was adding thick black bars over the park bench I had just painting, when my door opened.  
  
I look up, expecting my parents, but still kind of anxious, because they never came up to my room. But instead of my parents, I saw my first ghost who hadn’t died in the Murder House.  
My chest exploded. My brush splattered paint as it fell to the floor. I stumbled backwards and hot chocolate spilled down my legs.  
  
Steven smiled from the doorway. His bullet wounds dripped fresh blood onto the floor. Not fresh, a year old. He was a ghost, he was dead, I’d watched him die right in front of me.  
  
I stupidly yelled Tate’s name, hoping wildly that he would hear me.  
  
“Shh, Violet. I don’t want to get interrupted again. Not like last time,” he scolded and appeared right in front of me. I jumped back, but the only thing behind me was the wall, and Steven had me cornered all over again, one year later.  
  
“You can’t run from me Violet. I will follow you wherever you go.”  
  
“No, you’re dead!” I shrieked. The word hung in the air; it was the truth, but the truth didn’t matter, because he was here and he was mad.  
  
“I am dead, but I’m back, you little bitch. I only got to touch you a few times. It wasn’t enough.” He smoothed his dead fingers down my cheek, pressing into me, cold. I squeezed my eyes shut, remembering what Tate had told me once.  
  
“Go away!”  
  
Steven didn’t go anywhere, just laughed in my face. “It’s Halloween, bitch. You’re tricks don’t work today.” Still chuckling, he wandered over to the wall I had been painting. I stayed smashed against the wall. Steven perused the wall, touching random images, then froze. “Violet,” he said lovingly, “have you been painting your tattoos?” He didn’t wait for answer, just appeared back in front of me and faced my stomach to the wall. “I really did do a good job,” he mused, shoving my dress up to see my back. “You are” –he kissed the back of my neck—“my own” –kissed right in between my shoulder blades—“masterpiece.” I felt his tongue skim my lower back, just above my tights.  
  
Again. Violation. I would never get to touch Tate.  
  
A noise escaped my throat, something between a sob, a groan and the impatient wail of a child having a temper tantrum. The sound soaked into the wall, like the smoke from my cigarettes.  
  
Steven’s hands were creeping under my skirt. I shook against the wall and glanced at the clock on my dresser, wondering desperately where my parents were. But the clock read 11:59. Only one minute left of Halloween. Would Steven disappear then? This thought gave me the courage to push Steven away from me.  
  
He landed on the floor, on his back, glaring up at me.  
  
“I win,” I growled, and the clock changed to 12:00, and Steven vanished. His blood evaporated, the puddles on the floor drying, the back of my shirt unsticking from my skin.  
  
Even though Steven was gone, my chest was still tight and fluttery, and my blood burned in my veins. I couldn’t breathe right; deep breaths every few seconds. I was so dizzy, but I made it to the bathroom. I searched for a new razor blade—this deserved something extra sharp—and sliced it over my forearm.  
  
Blood, crimson red, hateful red, dripped out of me. Unable to stand, my hands slipped off the sink and I collapsed to the floor. The cut was too deep, and I imagined my mom—my sweet, loving mom—finding me, dead, in a pool of my own blood. She would never forgive herself, if she actually knew I cut myself. She didn’t stop me, now I was going to die on the bathroom floor. I yelled Tate’s name again, then passed out.


	11. Wake Up

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Violet wakes up in the hospital after Halloween night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: self harm

I came to in a hospital bed. I expected to be dead when I opened my eyes, maybe floating on a cloud, but I was tucked safely under the covers, a pristine bandage wrapped around my arm. Tate was in the corner on a cute little couch. His head was down, his elbows on his knees, fidgeting like a nervous child. I whispered his name.  
  
He sprung off the couch and kissed me; my forehead, cheeks, lips. “Teacup, what happened? Why did you do that?”  
  
“I didn’t mean to, Tate.” He was crying, and it was breaking my heart. “Steven showed up.” Tate froze.  
  
“I can’t believe I didn’t think of that. I’m so sorry.”  
  
“And he disappeared at midnight, but I was so upset and I cut too deep. It was an accident, Tate.” He fell into a chair by my bed. Then he smiled.  
  
“I told you to cut vertically.”  
  
I smiled too, and he took my hand, and it was just us and slow for a moment, and then my parents were rushing in and leaning over me, and nothing was quiet anymore. I explained everything to them. Everything, even the shit about the house and the ghosts that had died there. Everything about Steven finding me, and how he would just show up again one year from now.  
  
Tate told them all the terrible things that he had thought about, and the psychiatrist in my dad balked. It took a bit to convince him it actually was the house and Tate wasn’t just crazy, but he came around.  
  
My mom just gripped my hand and smiled sadly, looking at me quizzically.  
  
We were a strange sight; worried, slightly shell-shocked parents, kind boyfriend, accidentally suicidal daughter.  
  
…  
  
“We’re moving,” my mom said with finality, driving home. I was lounging in the back of the car with Tate, staring in awe at my parent’s hands woven together on the gear shift. “There’s a small house for sale a few streets over. It’s only two bedrooms though.”  
  
I pounced. “I’ll share a room with the baby!” Anything to get out of the Murder House.  
  
“Oh, Violet, you don’t want a newborn baby in your room,” my mom said softly. “And I would worry about the paint fumes.”  
  
“I don’t need a room!” My parents laughed in unison.  
  
“Relax, Violet. We’re going to put the baby in our room. That’s what we did with you, anyway.”  
  
“It’ll be like we’ve just gotten married again,” my mom said wistfully, gazing over at my dad. It was sickening, but if they could be happy again, maybe I could too.  
  
I looked over at Tate, mimicking my parents. He puckered his lips and I kissed him, exaggerating the noises our mouths made. My mom glanced back at us, curious, and groaned.  
  
“Violet, don’t do that where I can see you,” my dad scolded.  
  
“Sorry, dad, I forgot you still see me as an 8 year old girl.”  
  
“That’s because you are an 8 year old girl.” Mom glanced back again to smile at me, and we sure did seem happy, but I had a bandage on my arm because I couldn’t stop cutting myself.  
  
As if we had all remembered at the same time, my dad suggested therapy.  
  
“Not from you,” I snapped, a reflex. “But okay,” because I obviously couldn’t control it. Tate could help me with sex, but my cutting was way over our heads. And with the new baby on the way, and Tate by my side, and my parents holding hands, I wanted to stick around.  
  
…  
  
A few weeks later, so much was different. My arm had healed, the Murder House was empty save for the ghosts that had always been there, and would remain there. Tate and I, two ghosts the house would never get, were in my new room, painting the walls a clean white, a blank canvas for me to ruin with my paints.  
  
“Imagine all the possibilities,” I mused, standing back and taking in the white walls. Tate stepped up behind me and I expected to feel his arms around my waist, but instead paint dripped down my hair, onto my shoulders and forehead.  
  
“Tate!” I cried, whirling around, swiping a hand over my brow.  
  
“You have some paint on your face,” he teased. I smeared my paint covered hand down Tate’s nose. He gagged as some slipped into his mouth. “Violet, I’m going to die now!” he whined, rubbing his hand across his tongue.  
  
“I’m sorry.” I giggled. He grabbed my cheeks and kissed me, shoving the taste of paint into my mouth. I squirmed, but latched onto the bottom of his t shirt and pulled it over his head. It tousled his hair and wiped some paint off his nose, but he still looked ridiculous. I stifled a laugh against his lips.  
  
“Stop laughing at me. You have paint all over your hair.”  
  
“I love you.” I’d never said it before, but it slid out of my mouth like I was telling him the weather.  
  
He smoothed his hands over my painted hair. “I love you, too.” Tate reached around and unzipped my dress and I let it slide off my shoulders, landing in a heap at my feet. Tate looked delighted when he saw my lack of a bra. I undid his pants and pushed them down his legs, waiting for him to stop me like he usually did. He helped me get his underwear off, then I pushed him onto my bed, sitting up against my massive pile of pillows. I shimmied out of my underwear and quickly straddled him, hoping if I could just get his cock inside me he wouldn’t be able to stop me.  
  
But he reached between us and positioned himself against me.  
  
“Oh, God, finally,” I breathed as I sunk down around him, hot and thick, and stuck my left hand behind my back, just in case. Therapy was helping a lot, but I wasn’t going to let anything ruin my first time with Tate.  
  
I looked around, déjà vu hitting me hard. The first time Tate had touched me, we’d been in this exact position. It was fucking perfect; there’s a first—second—time for everything.  
  
I smiled at Tate, whose eyes were closed, like he was afraid I wouldn’t be real if he opened them. And he still had paint on his nose, which was hilarious. He took deep breaths as I moved over him, smooth. My entire body was blisteringly warm, and I felt so unbelievably sexy, with Tate inside me.  
  
“Tate, look at me,” I said and held his hair tightly. He opened his eyes lazily. “I love you.”  
  
“I love you, too, Teacup.” I kissed him sweetly, then curled my arms around his back, holding his chest to mine. His fingers were sinking into the soft skin at my hips, lifting my tired, blissed-out body.  
  
Steven drifted into my mind, but not the Steven who hurt me all those months ago; the Steven who I had shoved to the ground then watched vanish into thin air, because he was fucking dead, and I was alive, alive, alive.  
  
I might have said it out loud, “alive,” because Tate was looking at me funny, but my mind was quiet.  
  
Warmth spread from my very core—warmer than I had ever been before—and my entire body burst into metaphorical flames. I jerked and my torso collapsed, folding into Tate’s chest like a sleepy puppy.  
  
When I finally curled away from Tate, he was just watching me, smiling. I stupidly realized he had come, and I hadn’t even noticed.  
  
“I’m surprised you lasted that long, virgin.” I smiled teasingly.  
  
“Shut the fuck up,” he replied. I unwillingly climbed off him, and pulled on his flannel shirt, abandoned hours ago, somehow paint free. I found my pack of cigarettes by the windowsill and held one between two fingers.  
  
“Don’t smoke that,” Tate called as he slipped into his boxers on the way to the bathroom. I heard water running.  
  
I idly flicked my lighter on and off, putting down the cigarette. I’d quit the day I came home from the hospital.  
  
Tate emerged from the bathroom, his face paint free and flushed pink. I ditched the lighter and cigarette and sat next to him on the bed. Tate carefully picked up my left arm and brought it to his mouth, kissing my scars, because they would always be there. He moved my hair aside and kissed the bird on the back of my neck, because it would always be there too, but so would he, and so would I.


	12. Halloween, part 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Halloween, one year later.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: self harm, violence

It was one year later, 12:06 am, Halloween day. Tate and I were in my bed, waiting. We didn’t know how long it would take Steven to find my new house, but he didn’t have far to look.  
  
I was scared, and yet excited. I hadn’t seen Steven in a year, and I had no clue what was going to happen. But a lot had changed in the past year. I’d stopped cutting, I’d stopped dreaming about Steven, and I even used my left hand sometimes.  
  
Tate and I acted like the teenagers we were, putting our hands all over each other. I simply couldn’t get enough of him. We were young and in love and Tate was a motherfucking sex god.  
  
My Mom had the baby, a sweet little boy named Nicholas. He was so tiny, and hardly ever cried. Despite my Dad being a shithead, he was really trying, and my Mom was happy with him.  
  
“Why don’t you sleep a bit, Violet? I’ll keep watch,” Tate said and nudged my drooping shoulder.  
  
“No, I’m fine, really. And I’m too nervous to sleep.”  
  
“I won’t let him lay a finger on you, Teacup.”  
  
“Oh, I know.” He kissed my forehead and I curled further into his side. I might have drifted off, because Tate was like a giant, warm puppy. Perfect for sleeping on.  
  
…  
  
Next thing I knew, it was light outside and Tate was tickling my sides. I woke, already laughing.  
  
“Oh, you’re awake, great. Can we go get some food?”  
  
“Sure. I think Moira’s coming over.” I pulled on some shorts over my leggings and one of Tate’s shirts, forgetting momentarily that it was Halloween.  
  
My mother was holding Nicholas at the kitchen table, and Moira was cooing over him. When she saw me, she wrapped me in a hug, smoothing her hands over my hair, and said hello to Tate over my shoulder.  
  
We ate breakfast and talked like old friends. Moira told us what was going on with the other ghosts in the house, and held Nicholas for hours.  
  
Tate and I each kept our eyes peeled. It was 10 am. He should show up anytime.  
  
We eventually retreated to my room, but my Mom hugged me tightly before I could go.  
  
“No matter what you hear, Mom, don’t come up.”  
  
“I trust you Violet. Do what you have to do.”  
  
Tate smirked at me as he locked the door to my room.  
  
“What’s so funny?” I asked him.  
  
“What are you going to do to him?”  
  
“I don’t know. I’m hoping it will come to me in the moment.”  
  
“Are you sure you still want to go through with this? You know I can keep him away from you.”  
  
“Of course you can, cause you’re my big strong boyfriend.” I wrapped my arms around his neck and touched my lips to his. “But I want to do this.”  
  
“Can we have sex in front of him?”  
  
“Tate, stop.” He kissed me again and despite the date, I kissed him back.  
  
It was nice to just kiss him for a while, and not think about Steven coming back, but soon Tate was rutting his fucking hard on against my stomach, and I wanted to smack him.  
  
I flopped onto my bed. “Later, Tate, I promise. I just want to be ready when he shows up.” He sat next to me and leaned heavily on my shoulder.  
  
“I’m sorry. I just can’t help myself.”  
  
…  
  
We ended up playing an extremely intense game of UNO that just would not end. The next time I looked at the clock it was 2 pm.  
  
“How long can it take to find me a few streets over?” Tate shrugged.  
  
“Maybe he’s not coming.”  
  
“Oh, he’s coming.” Tate shrugged again, and dealt the cards again.  
  
…  
  
My dad popped in around 5. He looked around, confused.  
  
“No Steven?”  
  
“Not yet.”  
  
“Weird. I kind of wanted to give him a piece of my mind. But your mom and I are leaving soon.” They were taking Nicholas trick or treating with Moira, even though he was 4 months old and would not be eating any candy. But he sure looked cute in his cow costume.  
  
“Okay.”  
  
“Don’t have too much fun tonight.”  
  
Tate chuckled.  
  
It was funny, how Steven thought I would be the same a year later. Like I didn’t have lovely people in my life who would do whatever it takes to protect me.  
  
…  
  
Finally, it was 8 pm, and the UNO cards were discarded. I was lying over Tate’s stomach, and I had to keep waking him up.  
  
I was just unbelievably anxious.  
  
Then he just appeared at the foot of my bed.  
  
After all this time, he was still bleeding.  
  
I scrambled away from him, hiding behind Tate.  
  
No matter how many months had passed, and no matter how many times I fucked Tate, seeing Steven would never be easy.  
  
“Violet, who is this?” Steven asked kindly, watching Tate.  
  
I couldn’t speak yet.  
  
“I’m Tate. Her boyfriend.” His voice was harsh and angry. He’d never seen Steven before, the man who had destroyed my life.  
  
“A boyfriend, Violet? Do you let him see the tattoos? Do you let him touch you? Do you let him make love to you? How could you not wait for me? What about what we had?” Steven actually sounded offended, like I had cheated on him.  
  
Tate was about to snap, but I stood, ready.  
  
“He touches me all the time, Steven. He loves the tattoos.” Steven flinched when I said his name, and it filled me with power. “We didn’t have shit, Steven. You caused my car to crash. My mom lost her baby, my little brother. You raped me. You took my virginity. I was 15 years old, and you covered my body with ink. I can never get rid of the things you did to me, Steven.” He reached out to grab me roughly, but I slapped him right across the face, with my left hand.  
  
He stumbled backwards, and I grinned.  
  
“Tate, can you tie him up?”  
  
“Gladly.” Steven struggled while Tate restrained his arms and legs, but Tate was much stronger. “Don’t even bother disappearing. We both know you’ll be back, and I can do this all night,” Tate hissed in his face.  
  
“Please, Violet,” Steven whined. “I just want to touch you.”  
  
I laughed. “You will never touch me again, you son of a bitch. You can come back every Halloween for the rest of my life, but I’ll be ready. You will never lay a finger on me.” I dug out my old razors from my closet. “After what you did to me, Steven, I started cutting myself.” I idly fingered a clean blade. “I almost died because of it.” I knelt beside him and gestured for Tate to roll up Steven’s left sleeve. “I cut my whole arm—right across my palm, my wrist.” I made two deep cuts, pressing harder than I ever had on myself. Steven cried out. I smiled, then sliced my way up his forearm. His blood pooled around my knees. Finally, blood had been spilled in revenge. “How does it feel, Steven, to have your own blood seep out of your body?”  
  
He was silent. Tate drew designs in blood on the floor.  
  
I watched the cuts heal, then opened them right back up.  
  
…  
  
As I cut Steven’s arm over and over again, I told him everything. All that happened the past 2 years; the therapy, the move, the home invasion, the ghosts, Tate. Each drop of blood on the floor was a moment I had lived after Steven. Each cut I made was every person who had ever looked at me with pity in their eyes.  
  
Tate sat back and watched me, unbelievably turned on, I could tell.  
  
Steven stopped struggling, and I cut and cut.  
  
When I finished my story, I stood over him. His shirt was soaked in blood, both from my cuts and his bullet wounds. He looked pitiful.  
  
“Why me?” I asked. Tate stood at my side. “Why did you choose me?”  
  
“You’re so beautiful.”  
  
“Why did you hurt me?”  
  
“I didn’t!”  
  
I shoved my bare foot against his throat.  
  
“You did!”  
  
“You’re a masterpiece!”  
  
I pushed down on his neck, hard, and then bent down to his face.  
  
“I sure had fun today. I hope you did too.” I grabbed his jaw forcefully with my scarred left hand. “Happy Halloween, Steven,” I spat, kissed his cheek, and slammed his head back into the floor.  
  
I stood, looked at the clock. 11:55. Tate winked at me, and I pounced on him.  
  
We fucked right there, like animals, with Steven tied up on the floor, his blood spreading between our hungry bodies. We shoved clothes out of the way, and Steven didn’t get a single glimpse of my tattoo.  
  
I straddled Tate on the floor and worked my cunt up and down him, slow and hot.  
  
When I knew I was close, I looked at the clock, 11:59, and at Steven. We locked eyes, he vanished, and I came hard, sighing, letting out 2 years of stale oxygen and thoughts saturated with Steven. I fell into Tate and took a deep breath, filling my lungs with him, with the love that had saved me.


End file.
